ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the foci of comparison of the Congress of European Research in Mathematics Education (CERME) studies. It identifies three themes underlying the comparative nature of the studies. First, the chapter examines the aspects of mathematics education that are addressed and compared. Second, it looks at the choice of the systemic contexts for comparison. Finally, the chapter considers studies that make comparisons beyond 'culture'. Immediate access to colleagues from contexts that participants had chosen for their cross-cultural comparisons proved invaluable to better mutual understanding of cultural, social and political contexts of mathematics education. While understanding the role of culture in the construction of mathematics teaching and learning remained a shared interest of the groups' participants, studies accepted for presentation in the working group often included much smaller units of 'culture'. One important issue for the shaping of comparative studies was seen in the development of general strategies for undertaking 'culturally sensitive research'.
